Pre-Holiday Chaos and Deadlines

I don’t know why but a week before going on holiday I completely stress the hell out for no particular reason. I decide I need to buy one new everything, I decide that every outstanding to-do item on my list has to be completed well before my departure and I definitely have some sort of major breakdown about the state of my house.

I have no idea why this happens and I’ve been dealing with this the for the past week. Funny thing is, I think I’ve gotten more done this past week both at work and at home than I have in the past year.

I’ve always said that I work better under pressure (like everyone else says) but I never considered it to be more than a temporary last-minute thing to get you over the line with whatever you’re preoccupied with at the time. It makes me think that maybe this sort of self-imposed pressure needs to be more of a permanent thing. Knowing that I have a strict deadline (a holiday) that I’ve self-imposed encourages me to cut out any distractions, nip procrastination in the bud as soon as it rears it’s ugly (sometimes beautiful) head in order to get things done and tame my pre-holiday craziness.

If I think about other parts of my life, I can really see start to see the potential benefits that come from applying this same process to the way I work. In world where my overthinking and a thirst for perfectionism hinders my abilities to be the most efficient I can be, I could learn a lot from my pre-holiday chaos. It would be an interesting experiment to see how I go better implementing these self-imposed mini-deadlines and developing a greater respect for them aka actually freaking the shit out when it approaches instead of pushing it to next week because I can.

Anyway, the plane it about to land. Here comes my current deadline: holiday time.

This week's donut?

It's not enough to just set goals. Set a timeline and impose some deadlines on yourself to make sure things get done. But, most importantly, respect those deadlines. Just because you set them, doesn't mean your deadlines are less important than the ones you set for your clients.